


Vanitas Vanitatum

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-08
Updated: 2008-08-08
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:53:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1625288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by green_peen</p><p>Dr. Harvey Emerick was an artist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vanitas Vanitatum

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Memoriam

 

 

Dr. Harvey Emerick was a very important man, if he did say so himself.

Over the course of twenty-five years he earned his place as the leading medical researcher in the United States in the field of reconstructive surgery. Indeed, he had revolutionized the industry with his advances in post- traumatic accident reconstruction and skin grafting. The latter was of particular interest to him.

Even before he established and was successful in his own research, he made a name for himself during his residency when he assisted renowned surgeon Dr. James E. Cohen in the development of new surgical procedures that changed the very face of reconstructive surgery - no pun intended. Those advancements, and the renown that inevitably followed, helped him get in the door at The National Institute for Medical Research in London, England.

It was there that he met and married his wife, Patricia. She was a lab assistant, he was her superior, and it was all quite the scandal at the time. Twenty years, thirty-four hundred miles, and two children later he found himself lead partner of a very successful practice in Midtown, specializing in plastic surgery. On the side he consulted -- pro bono, of course -- for New York-Presbyterian Children's Hospital. The demands of the practice, and his research, kept him from Children's, though he managed to fit in a minimum four cases a year -- one case per quarter.

The practice itself brought him very little joy or professional fulfillment. He felt his patients to be shallow and weak-minded. He felt the objectives of his practice were no longer in line with his personal values. 

More to the the point, Dr. Emerick felt he traded in vanity. He pulled and plucked, sculpted and sanded. He extracted cellulite from the posteriors of rich socialites and injected it into other, more lacking, areas of their anatomy. He hacked off their tits, he stuffed their tits like one would a Christmas goose, he swapped one ultra-enhanced tit size for another. 

He found the egos of his patients repugnant, really. But who was he to remonstrate? It wasn't who he _was_.

No -- Dr. Emerick was not just a plastic surgeon catering to the whims of the spoiled housewives and appearance-obsessed executives. First of all, he was a father and a husband. He was a member of his church's faithful flock, attending Mass each Sunday and going to confession once a week.

_Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I installed a set of funbags and matching cock-sucking-lips onto the Widow Sheffield. Later I took them out for a spin._

Say three Hail Marys, my son, and buy your wife that hot little number she pointed out to you at Bloomingdale's last week.

He was a charter member of his building's co-op board. He volunteered at the St. Elizabeth's food kitchen each holiday, serving the homeless and less fortunate. He was a donating member of PETA.

But first and foremost, despite the vapid and essentially pointless nature of the majority of work he did at his practice, Dr. Harvey Emerick was an _artist._

Harvey knew skin. He loved its form and its function. He understood it, he knew what to expect of it. He loved the feel of it beneath his hands, though his gloves. He loved its capacity for healing, and enjoyed manipulating that capacity.

But what he loved most was the slide of his surgical knives through living flesh, and the resultant well of blood. It was a feeling that traveled through the tips of his fingers and thumb, slicking down his spine and pooling into his groin. It was amazing, this metal extension of his body. It was amazing how he could use it to heal.

Or destroy.

Two years ago, Harvey's research was stalled; initial trials using cadaver skin failed 100% of the time. The promising results he'd witness in animal trials could not be reproduced. His grant money was running out.

Then he found Olivia.

Oliva Patterson was a classmate of his youngest daughter, Sara. She had long blond hair, blue eyes, and the sweetest skin he'd ever seen. When she turned up missing, Harvey donated money to the search efforts, put up a cash reward. He prayed with Olivia's parents in church. His wife baked casseroles and watched the Patterson's other children. He shed tears, was comforter and comforted.

He hadn't meant for it to happen. He _hadn't_. But none of that mattered, not now that she'd been so helpful to him in his research. He hurt her. He cut into her. He harvested from her what he could, and when the authorities got too close, he cut away one of her fingers and sent them on a wild goose chase.

_Forgive me, Father, it's been six days since my last confession. I removed Olivia Patterson's right index finger and mailed it to her mother._

He had photos to keep track of his progress. There were close-ups of the raw donor areas, of the grafts themselves. He documented the growing process carefully, using stop-motion photography to keep track of the cloned graph samples growing in the incubator. He kept track of her healing process, or lack thereof. All of this in his little anonymous lab in the warehouse district, where the rent was cheap and no one asked questions.

Olivia was alive, if not well, and maybe one day he would learn enough from her to fix her. And when he fixed her, maybe he could fix the world. In the meantime, how could he be blamed for loving his work? Because he did; he loved it with every fiber of his being, despite hating the pain he brought to little Olivia. If his cock swelled and he creamed his pants like an over-stimulated schoolboy before finishing his first cut, well, that was between himself and his Lord and savior Jesus Christ.

He had a feeling he was getting closer, and he told Olivia as much one night. She could not respond -- he'd made that impossible -- but he imagined she answered him with relief and joy, and perhaps a little sadness that their partnership of the last two years would soon be at an end. 

But, until then, there were more tests to be run.

Dr. Emerick paused while looking over his incubation tanks. The latest samples were growing according to schedule. He was more than confident he would be testing Olivia's latest graft before the New Year...

_"Harvey."_

Dr Emerick looked up, startled. The incubation tanks around him hummed quietly, their dim light casting an ambient glow around the small lab. Olivia was strapped to her rotating traction bed, her eyes closed tight and her mouth full of respirator tubes. 

He chuckled to himself. It was nothing but his imagination.

That was the last thought he had for a long while.

***

Harvey fought for consciousness, finding himself disoriented and dizzy. It took him a moment to realize he was hanging upside down, secured tightly to the traction bed in which Olivia had spent the last two years of her young life. It took him a little longer to realize he was not alone.

"Good evening, Dr. Emerick," said the man sitting across the darkened room. His face was covered in shadow and what looked like a scarf. His voice was low, cultured, and deadly calm. "I'm certain you wonder just why I've left you hanging."

"Nngh," Harvey started to reply angrily, then stopped to retch. Once he regained his composure, he was able to slur, "Who are you? Why have you drugged me?"

"I've been following your progress, Dr. Emerick." The skin around the man's eyes crinkled, as if he smiled beneath the cloth draping his face. "You might say I'm a big fan of your... _work."_

Harvey tried to swallow, but his mouth was desert-dry. "What do you want?" 

"The same thing you want, Dr. Emerick: For you to succeed in your research."

Harvey pondered this. "W-What have you done with her?"

The man raised a brow, or at least seemed to. "Don't worry, Doctor. I have taken care of her."

A spear of pain and terror drove up Harvey's spine, and without realizing it he pulled against his bonds. "Please," he said. "Let me down." He choked on his own fear for a moment before crying out, "I need to take care of my patient!"

The man rose and approached him slowly, chuckling in amusement. "Harvey, Harvey, Harvey," he said, as if meaning to soothe. "I told you, I have taken care of our dear poor Olivia. I have taken very good care of her indeed."

Harvey experienced another bout of disorientation as the man reached out and spun the bed suddenly upright. The man had thrust his face close to his, their eyes inches apart. 

"What do you want?" Harvey shouted. His head pounded relentlessly. "I have money! Whatever you want! You'll get it."

The man laughed again. "I have money. More money than you'll ever see in your lifetime, Dr. Emerick." He reached up and pulled at the scarf covering the bottom half of his face. "I want you to _fix this!_ "

Harvey didn't know if he wanted to scream or to vomit; the only thing that saved him was his 25 years as a surgeon. Beneath the scarf, the man was missing most of his face. Skin, connective tissue, the cartilage of his nose, most of his chin. It was one of the most horrifying injuries heÕd ever seen where the person was still upright and able to function.

"What happened?" he choked out. 

The man grinned, and Harvey noticed his teeth were too perfect to be anything but fake. "I was... burned."

"Dear God."

"No," the man replied. "Not Him." He reached up and recovered his face with his scarf. "As I said, Dr. Emerick, I have been watching you for some time. I watched you take little Olivia and bring her here. I've watched you run your tests, I've watched you re-grow what you take from her in these glass tanks."

Harvey began to tremble as the man abruptly shoved him, and he tumbled feet over head several times. He came to a stop at last, flat on his back and staring up into the dark rusted rafters of his lab. He could hear the rustle of the man's clothes, the faint metallic noises as he touched Harvey's surgical tools. 

"You will help me, Dr. Emerick, and I will help you."

"How do you propose this?" Harvey asked faintly. 

"I can help you complete your research. I will be a willing participant, a guinea pig I believe is the terminology."

"I haven't finished the last round of tests--"

"Yes," the man said, his voice chilly. "You have. I'm Test Subject B, and we will begin immediately." Harvey's eyes widened in horror as the man raised his fist, brandishing a scalpel. "First, however, I think you need a little incentive."

Harvey fought. Harvey pleaded. And then Harvey screamed.

 


End file.
